Blood on the Leaves: Black Flesh and American Freedom in the Underground Premiere

As a critic, I know when I’m too biased to write a proper review. When I’ve become so deeply enamored with a series, I leave the reviews to my colleagues, and opt, instead, to write love poems disguised as interviews, essays, or reflections on certain shows. I’m always amazed at those writers who can consistently do both—love a series and keep their critic’s composure.

I can’t do that with Underground, and before you say it, I’ll say it: it’s partly because I’m a black woman. And, perhaps more to the point, I was raised by a black woman and a professor of black American history. So I previewed the first four episodes of the series through the lens of a black woman raised by the kind of black woman who sat down and watched Roots (and Eyes on the Prize, and Sarafina!, and countless others) with me before I was old enough (by most standards); and when I was on vacation from school (or, okay, that one time in 8th grade when I got suspended) she took me to sit in on her African-American History courses at Boston University. Our living room was a library and every vacation was really a research trip, including the summer we spent in Zimbabwe and South Africa. So this is one of those rare times when I actually find myself too close to the material to view it properly. I watch Underground not just as a TV-lover and TV critic, not just as a descendant of the types of characters at the center of the narrative, but as a daughter still grieving my mother and the lessons she taught me. Underground is precisely the kind of series my mother would have watched with me, and its mere existence reminds me of my great loss. Oh, if Mom were here she’d be fact-checking the hell out of this premiere, I thought last night. And no, she probably wouldn’t approve of the Kanye West-infused soundtrack, though I’d have done my damndest to convert her.

Now, all that being said, I still have a job to do. I must write about this incredible show. Let’s begin with a brief recap of the season opener, “The Macon 7”: A birth. A party. A funeral. A beating. A baby thrown out with the bath water. A little boy holding out his hands for a beating. A young woman sacrificing her wrists for her brother; or, flesh for flesh. A little boy fanning white women at the party. A savior, a sadistic captor. Birth, party, funeral, plotting, planning, whispering, limping, but most of all blood. Blood and flesh for freedom.

The term “black bodies” has become, like other great terms popularized by a culture that may not seek to fully grasp their significance, overused. It’s lost the power it held in the hands of people like Claudia Rankine and Ta-Nehisi Coates. And, anyway, it’s always a little dangerous to talk about black people, and focus on the flesh—for many of us, there’s this deep-rooted fear of being reductive. So when I say I want to write about the significance of flesh and blood in Underground’s premier, I already know I’m wading in somewhat troubled water. But there can be no freedom without great risk, so let’s dive in.

Early on we discover that actual blood must be shed for the map to freedom—the map which will lead those enslaved off of this great Georgia plantation—to even come into existence, and that sacrifice is no small thing. Aldis Hodge’s Noah meets a man after he’s been captured. The man has been shot by slavers, and somehow finds the strength to carve this description on the wall; he uses his last breath to tell Noah that the directions work—he must run. Noah uses the man’s blood to cover the words, then takes a piece of cloth, and imprints those bloody words onto it, creating the map he believes he’ll use to escape. This map wouldn’t exist without the physical sacrifice of the first man, and his literal blood on the text. This is a show about the body; how black flesh that was legally owned by white men and women, was also the very means of escaping to freedom.

Noah has faith that he’s found a way out; and at the same time, it’s important that we see characters who have no such faith—no reason to believe in a future for them or their children. A baby is drowned, and it makes perfect sense. What that child will have to endure in this life—it doesn’t seem worth it. So the mother chooses an ugly death.

Noah’s creation of the map might be further read as an implication that black freedom in America is directly connected to the flesh and blood of other black people; in other words, that there is power in the blood. And for Underground, this physical power is not separate from an intellectual power. For one, the map would not exist if the man Noah encountered hadn’t found a means to learn how to read and write. But beyond that, the map has been written in a coded language, otherwise known as a Negro spiritual. Take a moment and consider the sheer brilliance of writing seemingly innocent song lyrics that actually provide an escape route. This is one reason why Paul Vigna at the Wall Street Journal rightfully likened the series to a caper. As the show progresses, we’re going to see how cunning and even manipulative some of theses characters are—and I’m not speaking of the white characters.

Even in this first episode, it’s important that we understand Noah as a man with a plan. He’s not unhinged, and he’s not going to make this escape as a frantic move towards freedom—not that we would blame him. Noah may not be one of the few enslaved people who can read, but his intelligence (that fake limp was a very smooth move, for example) is what keeps him alive in spite of having been caught running. His ability to “perform” as a slave is his disguise, but his awareness of this performance is what’s lighting that fire in him to run.